LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

One of the most important things to me in any game is my ability to customize my character to make him / her unique in contrast to the rest of the player base.  A lot of the articles in MMORPG blogs tend to be about all the new and shiny games that will further dilute our real world experiences, and this is very important for MMO tourism.  If you want to go deep, then we need to learn a wee bit about the games we already play.  Over the last few weeks, I developed a new appreciation for the depth and breadth of Lord of the Rings Online.

In that spirit, I was thinking about how to make my character a little bit older looking.  I wanted it to be more like me than one of the Back Street Boys.  So, I went to the barber in Bree’s Prancing Pony (you might have missed that if you read the books or just watched the movie – but yes, the Pony has a barber).  The first step was to chat with the barber, located inside the inn,  and make some selections:

I wanted to lose the color in my beard, trim it up, and add a lot of wrinkles.  I mean, all those years of ale and my kids … it took its toll, and I earned it.  So this is where I started the visit to the barber:

It cost me around 45 silver pieces to make around 3 changes.  I developed an age appropriate avatar — no more baby faced Caradin of Gonwaith. This is the final, handsome output:

That’s all there is to it.  LOTRO designers placed an immense amount of systems inside the game for players to enjoy.  My only complaint is that they are mainly NPC driven.  Even crafting can be solo’d.  One of the things I used to do in the SWG days was to ply my trade as an image designer.  In that case, you needed other players to help you change your appearance.  Now, if LOTRO can start building in things like player buffing and player led customization, then it will be an even richer experience.  Simple player interdependence, such as buffing, crafting, and image design, allows for a whole new level of emergent content that in no way involves the game designer. 

If you have any suggestions about LOTRO, Champions, or Warhammer that highlights game features or things that need some greater degree of coverage, please drop me an email:  xaviermorganATlive.com.